the Forecast

It's all very well to plan a fortnightly camping trip. To get the food prepared, the gear ready, and the schedule organised. But come departure day there will always be just one, tiny, 78,772km² problem: this is Scotland. It might be beautiful and full of majestic vistas, but this can be hard to appreciate when your tent, clothes, and shoes are wet and freezing and there's so much rain dripping off your forehead that you might as well be trying to see those vistas through a waterfall. It's okay if you've managed to get everything pitched and ready before the rain sets in, and I'd be on my way to some hillside this very minute if I thought there was any chance of that. But the forecast for today and tomorrow calls for one thing and one thing only: rain. Rain, rain and a 60% chance of more rain. Even though the sky is a pristine and cloudless blue at the moment, bitter experience has taught me that if we take the risk and the weather doesn't hold, the cost of our recklessness will be high.

When I lived in Canada I was once the director of a leadership program at a small, no-frills camp in Northern Ontario. By frills, I am referring to such things as running water, or beds. So it was really more a semi-permanent wild campsite. As part of their training, I was required to take my group of 10 teenagers on a 5 day out-trip. By no means was I qualified to do this. Despite having grown up attending another, slightly more luxurious summer camp (I can still remember the way your cheek would stick to the plastic coating on the mattress if you accidentally strayed from your pillow, and the battle to limit any visits to the toilet facilities in an effort to avoid exposing one's tender areas to the swarms of mosquitoes and colonies of spiders in every corner. Unpleasant, perhaps, but luxurious in that there were beds and toilets to be had) which offered classes in things like 'paddle strokes', I'd never had the chance to try my fancy skills in anything other than perfectly still water. And to be honest, even that experience was limited; most of the paddle-in-water time I'd clocked was accomplished by sitting cross-legged on the edge of the dock, dipping the paddle into the lake and pretending to be in a canoe. I thought I was a brilliant navigator but it turns out almost anyone can keep an unmoving dock on course, even without a paddle or the ability to execute a flawless J-stroke. Needless to say, my confidence in my ability to handle rapids and waterfalls was not particularly high.

Battling the wind on the outskirts of Georgian Bay

I survived 2 ½ days of the out-trip with only minor difficulties. After getting over my initial terror of rapids I managed to run a few courses of them pretty successfully, only tipping my canoe once in an attempt to clear a small, narrow waterfall about 4 feet high. I did accidentally smash my head off a rock under the waterfall, and then proceed to nearly die of panic because every time I surfaced I was trapped under a canoe with an ever-diminished air bubble in it, but eventually I prevailed. So things were going relatively well. Or seemed to be, anyway, given my concussed state.

But then came the rain. Our situation was already looking pretty grim, as our scouts had neglected to scout quite far enough ahead, and as a result we had ended our last portage too early. All the canoes were back in the water, and we rounded a bend to find a set of unmanageable rapids pulling us in with alarming strength. Everyone battled to reach the side of the river before getting sucked into the gauntlet, but even though we were all successful our problems were far from over. We could see that portaging from our present location would be near-impossible, even without the rain. On both sides of the river, the land rose up in angles not far off 90 degrees. And thus, already soaked to the bone, we spent 3 hours emptying the canoes, guiding them down the rapids one by one, and then ever-so-carefully hauling our gear downriver like spiders: clinging to the rockface with hands and feet and trying not to let our heavy packs pull us down into the dangerously swift water. Dusk was creeping up by the time we got everyone and everything to safety. Unfortunately, the landscape hadn't changed much and there was no way to pitch the tents on such steep slopes. That's how we ended up still on the river as night fell, rainwater rising in the bottoms of the canoes, and blind terror rising in our hearts. Or mine, at any rate. I am not a very brave person at the best of times – the fear of a painful or drawn-out (or anything other than a peacefully-in-her-sleep) death keeps me from enjoying many things in life – and it had taken all my courage just to steer my canoe down rapids at all, never mind attempting it in the dark. But of course the river could not continue smoothly. Inevitably there was a patch of extremely rough water before the land to either side of river finally began to level out.

I'm pretty sure I came very close to dying of panic in the five minutes it took to guide my canoe through the unseen dangers of the rapids. But I made it to the bottom, where I felt as much like I'd survived a battle as I am ever likely to. Euphoria! In the proper sense of the word. I am rarely worried enough to feel euphoric when things take a turn for the better, but in this case, I am embarrassed to admit that my reaction to the night-rapids was to believe I wouldn't survive, and thus my response on coming through successfully was equally disproportionate. Despite the rain, despite the cold, despite the fact that two of my 17-year-old charges had ended up in the river, I felt amazing! But it was not to last.

By the time we pulled our canoes to shore at a flat stretch of ground, the sky was impossibly dark. And despite all the horrors that had gone before, this was when I really discovered how awful it is to camp in the rain. You pull your tent from your bag, only to discover it's already wet. It takes three people an hour to pitch it, because the fabric is sticking to itself and the sodden channels through which the tent poles should go are just not having any of it. On the plus side, the tent pegs require no coaxing upon sliding them into the muddy ground. On the down side, however, they slide right back out again the moment the wind picks up. Which it does. Repeatedly. There comes a depressing point where it's still not pitched quite right, but you are so cold and fed up and hungry that you can no longer be bothered fighting with it, so you turf your gear inside to prevent it blowing away and retreat to attempt a campfire.

I'm still not sure how the fire ever got started. I remember digging around with bare hands in the frigid muddy ground, trying to get below the layer of leaves to find some dry kindling. I also remember a fair amount of flammable liquid being poured onto the kindling as encouragement. Whatever it took, we did succeed in getting it going, or I may not have made it through to be telling you this today. The kids all gathered round as we began to cook up a big pot of mac n' cheese. Flashes of lightning every few minutes illuminated our pale, sallow faces, so eager in their hunger, and the sad, sagging attempts at shelter pitched behind the firepit. The food smelled amazing. At long last the pasta was tender and the sauce was mixed in, and everyone rushed the pot at once. Ah selfish humans, see how your greed is your undoing! For now your mac n' cheese is all spilt upon the dirty ground, and you are so hungry you will scoop it up again. Down on hands and knees each of you will grasp handfuls of pasta, pine needles, and mud, and you will be thankful for the darkness that hides what you are forced to eat from your finicky eyes. But darkness can't hide the sharpness of a pine needle when you try to swallow it. No, it cannot.

Surprisingly, even with our bellies full no one feels much better. It's so cold, though, that our expert out-trip guides force us to do the hokey-pokey. And then the macarena, and a conga line, and that Sunday School one about father Abraham having many sons. Finally they judge that our heart-rates are restored as fully as possible, and we are allowed to crawl into our damp sleeping bags and attempt unconsciousness. It is mainly this scene – 13 depressed people doing the hokey-pokey in the rain with mud around their mouths – that deters me from heading to Loch Glentool today as planned. The only thing sadder than 13 people in the situation previously described would be 2 people in the same, one with a Scottish accent who I'm pretty sure would be pure ragin and like as not to be substituting profanities for all the lyrics of the songs. Even after relating all this I am kind of tempted to go, but it would have to be alone as there is no chance of Mark leaving his armchair today. And I just can't be bothered being miserable by myself.

Overturned canoe the morning after the storm